K.S. BauerStory

Just a Walk in the Park

2014-04-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Charlie went for a walk, as he was wont to do when he was feeling out of sorts. He walked all the way uptown then across town and back again. He walked until he finally came upon Central Park. He walked past the pond, up East Drive, continued past the Bethesda Fountain and over the bow bridge; he walked all the way around the Reservoir and up to the North Woods. He walked and walked but the feeling of melancholia was an oppressive thing riding along with every foot step. As much as he walked he couldn’t shake the feeling. It was cold and bursts of cloud came from his mouth and trailed off him like an old steam engine choking along up a steep incline. Charlie felt the ground rising to meet his footfalls, a glad counterpoint to the burdensome oppressiveness wrapping him. His feet took him to the lake again. The winter earth hard and unyielding beckoned to him. He stepped off the path. The ground crunched under his shoes. He stared off at the water, and the naked limbs of trees, and the hardy green shrubs and evergreen bushes. They spoke to him telling him something without language. Charlie had left a letter before heading off on his walk.

Dear Louise,

Love is an everlasting spring-time. What detours did my heart take to find you?

How many frozen mornings turned bright with scented air have we had?

Ethereal spears collecting rays from cool chickadee mornings, the warmth of fields stirring moved my heart in the right direction. What detours do I still need to take? What obstacle needs to be toppled still? Love is an everlasting spring evaporating the mists of mourning.

Intoxicating visions burst forth saying;"renewal, renewal, renewal still!"

Before I met you my heart was already broken by you. I have rummaged my way through life with a soaking soul too long.

Standing staring out at the lake and the trees, he felt the earth comforting below him in his toes, on the balls of his feet, his heels, he felt himself growing down into the earth. A great release whelmed up inside him. He felt the melancholia calcify and drop away. He couldn’t move but didn’t have too all the nourishment of life was right there in that moment. So Charlie stood like that firmly rooted, reaching skyward basking in the sun.

From Mapus Mundi: My Search for the Ultimate Territory

2013-09-10T10:31:00.002-07:00

From Mapus Mundi: My Search for the Ultimate Territory: by E.H. Kranklehunt

Speculation set my mind adrift, in the crimson gloaming, the triumvirate of planets beamed and danced; the sparking light. Its then that the ghostly images of the brush and bramble covered hills takes up the imagination leading consciousness down before unheard of paths, a mixing of senses occurs dislocating one from the reality of this world complete and total, suffering (that may be the wrong word because it is not without its pleasures) this dislocation brings with it new feelings, thoughts, and associations. Landscapes speak light reflected. Sounds distant are brought intimate and close, vibrant, reverberating, former thoughts, former self is brought away far distances only remaining an echo on the hills. The taste of words, the color of sound, and the feel of images all conspired to show me a new reality. I was not sober when I started my journey and though I have not touched my sweet drink in what seems months I am not sober at the end of my journey. All my old remembrances shouted back at me through a prism of dark crimson light like a ruby shattered and swirled to all corners of the sky.

The motes in my vision turned curling serpentines pointing me in the correct direction; the map was no use any longer, I couldn't translate my own symbols or signs, the markings became indecipherable and distant. Dragonflies hovered around me. Bush flies and moths, delicate and papery butterflies beat carefully landing on jungle vines, buzzing insects, mosquitoes, flying ants, bees, hornets and all the stinging flying pests, crickets squelched and cicadas sang, fireflies like beacons betrayed a path toward a structure tangled and forgotten, strangled by the green revenge of the jungle.

Wispy but opaque fog chewed the tops of the pyramids. The complex was shut in by the foam like clouds but even they were encircled by the green spiked palms and dense ropy jungle. There was no escape, the landscape was just playing out what was the true destiny- our true destiny. The world leads you to these corridors and locked rooms; the birth place of tragedy and the end of desire, it’s the death urge and the life urge it’s the culmination of the hero’s quest to arrive at this time and place at least once in your life ever so short ever so fragile.

The shaman provided me with the True Map to the ruined pyramid in the middle of the complex for not only was the top shrouded in the queer jungle fog that seemed to sway with the jungle itself, but a titanic gash laid its eastern side open and left the sandstone blocks destroyed and tumbled down and in disarray. High up on that ruined side was a crevice that bore entrance into the inner sanctum of the temple complex itself. I started to crawl up the broken stone seeking the entrance that was about half way up of what I could see of the pyramid, the shaman stood stone like. “Aren't you coming?” I yelled down to him, he stood there solemn. I took this for some more native superstition and continued to crawl; hand and foot, up the mortared brick. Finally I came to a break in the wall that permitting me to squeeze my body inside.

In the Shaman's Tent

2013-09-09T14:05:00.000-07:00

Astringent smoke not wholly unpleasant, like a sweetish tobacco, stung my eyes and throat and made me choke and cough upon entering the shaman's tent. The rain pattered down producing inside the tent what sounded like a rhythmic drumming, the air was electric, and the little hairs on my arms and neck stood up instantly dry in the charged atmosphere. I feared lightening would strike us.

The shaman himself was reclining near a small fire that had a gray mass of leaves smoldering on it. The smoke filtering up through a chimney hole at the top of the tent but not before filling the tent. I could only see him through the thick haze of the smoke that permeated the lungs and a fit of coughing commenced once more. "Dear Sir, I GAC-KAW! aah, sorry, Dear Sire, my maps." I spluttered to the figure beyond the haze. A young assistant of his appeared at my side holding a gourd cup. I was shocked by him at first for the tent didn't look able to hold three people, I was having a hard time determining the dimensions and lost site of the tent walls. The shaman motioned for me to drink and I imbibed along with him the drink that was much like my own only more sour and strong.

He was a slight man, and frail from what I could see of him. He spoke in his dialect and I responded. "I no more speak your language than you speak mine, I'm afraid." He motioned to his assistant to fetch the Monsignor who served as our translator. I didn't want to get that man involved so tried my best before he arrived. Not wanting to accuse one of his people of theft although their feelings on that vice are quite different than our own I was still a frighted of offending the old man (if nothing else my nanny Briselda raised me with manners). "I...you...I am...I have... You see... I have mislaid my maps." He was stoic and simply took a drink, which I did as well. I had an idea perhaps a pictorial representation would bridge our dumbness and drew in the dry ground with my cigarette holder a facsimile of one of my key maps that had been "mislaid". "Map" I said placing the cigarette holder back in my mouth and a mouthful of dirt as well.

"MAP." he said shaking his steel gray hair and leaned closer across the smoldering fire. The fire lit his face, I was able to more thoroughly examine the man. Indeed an ancient specimen he was but his movement belied a strange inner vitality, his limbs were strong, and balled with muscle, and though his face was as lined and marked as one of my maps, it shown a vibrant glow, orange in the firelight. He smiled showing me his worn teeth still there in his head; (more than I can say for myself, the fault of a certain rather puckish rouge of a burro, but that's a story for another time) he held out a bowl filled with some kind of fungi and made the sign to eat. I took a handful of the mushrooms and he laughed a hooting laugh, his eyes cataracted a mossy green. I was held in his gaze. I saw something moving like the jungle canopy. The rhythmic sound had continued and the pulsating droning and electric feel of the air grew more intense. I started to sweat. He peered at me with his clouded, mossy eyes and with a knobby finger dangling off a muscle jangled arm started to draw a map on the tent floor next too mine. The cacophony inside intensified still, and I felt like the tent was growing larger and folding in on itself simultaneously. I was tense with excitement. The map he was drawing- I recognized it! It was one of my own but with more detail. I grabbed a piece of charcoal from the fire and drew the map directly onto my own body. He clapped and shouted at this and spoke some gibberish.

It seemed that the rain had stopped but a new rhythmic sound had taken its place. I wondered if this was an effect of the static electricity of the tropical storm. But as I copied the map I noticed the movement of hundreds of small blue, red, yellow, and green frogs leaping and hopping and all croaking together in a syncopated rhythm My eyes were wide and I hurriedly finished copying the shaman's map. The boy finally arrived with a much mud bespattered monsignor, who had mastered the native language on previous visits and spoke to the indians like only one could who wished to convert them and oppress their natural ways; brutal or savage as they were.

"About time you got here you fool! Look at you, your filthy man; tell this man I am grateful." I brushed away the map in the dirt with my hands as I made to stand up. The monsignor spoke some native words to the shaman and the shaman spoke back in a lengthy sermon such that I was able to escape the tent before the monsignor had noticed the charcoal markings all over my body.

In the Land of Dead Dragonflies....

2013-08-20T11:15:00.003-07:00

I’ve seen you darting, surveying for a place to land.

In the tumult and crash tide breaking in awe and weeping,

gone silent their lament that arrived in the receding night.

Some running “tra la la la-ing” along.

All hear nothing, no signs, no signals, no voice.

Behind a cloud shinning cool.

I saw your stain glass wings shattered; an iridescent stain on the cruel concrete. Which dumb St. George smote you? Whose unfeeling limb? Who so reckless with your message?

Finally landed.

From the Journals of E.H. Kranklehunt:"PINCH ME, I'M DROWNING!"

2013-05-31T14:21:00.001-07:00

"PINCH ME, I'M DROWNING!" I gasped for air and awoke. I found myself sitting as naked as I was born in a shallow puddle of tepid jungle water. Beside me, tossed aside in all their damp glamour: my maps my glorious maps. It was steamy and the sun shone over the clearing empty now of the shanty town and tents. All the native peoples with them gone only I and my lone canopy still stood.

As I sit writing this still in the buck for the scalawags must have absconded with my clothing before they departed so hasty. My mouth tastes of murk and mud, for I must have swallowed a great deal of jungle water. The last thing I remember was the woman with the facial tattoos and the steel grey hair. I will try to piece together as much as I can for this journal. At the quintessence at least I know, my search for long forgotten treasuries of ancient knowledge started like this.

It was evident that I must reclaim my maps if the expedition was going to be anything like successful, and if there is anyone this particular tribe whose word they held dear it was their beloved and feared medicine man or shaman if you will.

I knew where his shelter laid but didn't want to draw the attention of the crowd, besides I could hear the corn husks still pelting the Monsignor. So I slipped out the back of my canopy and just then great peal of thunder erupted and a downpour was released from the clouds. This brought even more hilarity to the crowd now, for the Monsignor slipped and sloshed in the mud, as the people hallooed; jabbering and dancing, they too becoming coated in mud.

Setting off to find the shaman I thought of my excursions in the South Pacific and the dire circumstances I encountered with the witch doctor on one particular island. He was a sanguine cannibal headshrinker and wanted me to marry his daughter to boot. I thought it best to find my assistant, lazy as he was, to provide me support. Pacing the pleasure sheds I stuck my head in surely my assistant was there as he had been since we made camp. "Come along you scrofulous wretch!" He was snoring asleep with his arm flung over a lithe girl with long ebony hair that glowed in the low light of the shed. "Hurry now- the cretins have stolen my maps!" The girl looked up incredulous as if to say,“How dare you bother our napping” then pointing at my wet mustaches burst into a peal of laughter. (It seems a trait with these people: laughing). "Daresay I, stop fleching around, my maps, I say!" I had almost lost my temper. Finally rising up in the lazy manner that was his he had first to comb his part down the center and made sure his tie was just right before venturing out. The rain had not abated and both of us now were thoroughly drenched through by the time we arrived at the shaman’s tent. "Stay here, I will shout your name if things take a turn southerly." He gave me a stupid grimace and with both hands parted his hair down the middle.

Interlude: The Journals of E.H. Kranklehunt

2013-03-02T09:16:00.004-08:00

From the Journals of E.H Kranklehunt.

“You tricksters!” I knocked over the lamps- oil spilling, I knew the vagabonds had come and replaced my maps with fakes. I stood up hitting my head and spilling my sweet drink. I would not have all my work on this journey and search undone. They come here selling corn mashed with fish and sneak in while I am asleep from my cava. I rushed out shouting, “You tricksters, you vagabonds, you rascals, and rapscallions! My maps! My maps! I must have my maps back!”

They were still in the camp. Posted up with their shanty tents and foodstuffs; the men in their armor eating and consorting with their pleasure girls. “What would great Jaguar have done with you?”

And they remembered what had been said about the East. From the east would come a man full of nonsense talk and fury. They turned toward Monsignor Fabricio and began throwing corn husks at him.

Authors Note: Thanks to C.M. Mayo's Daily Five Minute writing exercises for inspiration. http://www.cmmayo.com

Mort and Nito

2013-03-02T08:29:00.001-08:00

The Grey-Eyed girl grabbed hold of his jacket sleeve and jerked him back from the curb as spray of greasy brown pot-hole water geysered up from under the oblivious beeping taxi’s tire.

“Sometimes I think the city is held together by dirty rain water,” Mort said.

“Ha, yeah and rust,” Nito said.

It was raining an all enveloping mist with a few fat cold drops, which would land on the back of Mort’s neck and run down his back. Nito had her hood up but the mist clung to her sweatshirt making it a wet sponge around her.They walked heads bent against the rain, the concrete sidewalk haloed in gasoline rainbows.

“I should of brought an umbrella,” Mort said.

“I don’t believe in umbrellas,” said Nito as she jumped a murky puddle. “We're almost there anyway.”

It was a small Italian restaurant with tinkling glasses, white table clothes, and waiters in black vests and bow ties. They were seated at a small table they were dripping wet and used their cloth napkins to dry their faces and hair.

“To me it’s just like a corpse of crumbling concrete, belching and bursting with noxious gases. We’re just the microbial life that’s left and worse; blow flies and maggots scurrying around trying to make a living off the host, running to catch the bus or thronging in crowds on 5^th ave. stampeding through Penn Station at rush hour. I imagine it’s all liquefying until all that’s left is the polished glass bones of the city,” Mort said rubbing his hands together on the napkin.

“Wow, that’s pretty grim, but I get your analogy.”

The waiter approached; his arms folded behind his back. “Have you decided on a wine sir?”

“No, not yet,” Mort said picking up the menu.

Walking away the waiter turned his nose up in the imperceptible way waiters in expensive restaurants have of doing without overtly offending you or actually turning their noses up.

“That guy was staring at you since we walked in,” Nito said.

“I guess he has something against wet people. I’m used to it- I never carry an umbrella,”

“So you don’t believe in them either, we have something in common,” Nito smiled. “You know, I’ve been staring at you since we sat down too.”

“You- I like staring at me,” Mort said cracking a thin grin, a wave of heat spread over his pale skin. “You do have a way with those eyes.”

“It’s one of my skills,” Nito said. “Glad you noticed. Do you want to get out of here?” The grey-eyed girl stared down the waiter.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

“I know an awesome taco place in the Village.”

Mort and the grey-eyed girl walked and chatted at an easy pace (the rain having let up) through billowing clouds of steam emanating from the belly of the city through the groans and grinding teeth of garbage trucks, grating and slamming dumpsters full of trash and cast off scraps. The bleating and careening metro buses hydraulics hissing , kneeling like subservient beasts of burden, wailing sirens and shouting, horns beeping and blaring everywhere, jackhammers, and alarms, but none of this interrupts them only makes them raise their voices or turn their head so they can hear each other better. The lights of the digital signs, the glass of store fronts, stationary stores, smoke shops, porno palaces, 24hr. bodegas selling fruit out on the street lit up with bright flowers dyed every hue, bars and more bars, thrift stores, cleaners, hair and nail salons, trendy shops selling women’s clothes, abandoned empty store fronts, construction sites that turn the street into a maze of corridors and mirrors, the muck of the street an unspeakable combination of human excreta, vomit, dog shit, and leaking garbage bags, exhaust from the constant stream of cabs, cars, trucks, and buses.

“What’s the deal with your friend?” Nito asks.

“Prof. Sign is my friend but he is also my employer.”

“Oh, so are you the Watson to his Sherlock?”

“I guess you could say that, it’s really his story but I keep getting dragged in.”

“What are you working on now?”

Union square lit by the lampposts the trees glistened still dark and wet scrawling there naked branches out into the hazy sky. Mort fumbled his phone out of his pants pocket.

“Fuck!” Mort said looking at his phone.

“What is it?”

“Prof. Sign needs me. Shit, I forgot to turn up the ringer.”

“How long ago did he call?”

“Three hours ago.”

The Mad Book Dealer

2012-05-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

Antique, First Editions, Unique,

Collectable.

Books Bought

ONLY BEST QUALITY!!!

DO NOT WASTE MY TIME!!!!!!

Nitocrisarchive@gmail.com

The grey-eyed girl passed Charlie coming out of the elevator of West 96th street. The door was open and she could tell by the combined odor of old paper, and Moroccan leather that there would be some decent books here. Shelves ran along one wall of the apartment. She pushed the sliding library ladder so she could get a better look at a set of Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico bound in red gilt leather.

“Just give me what you think is fair.”

“You have a very fine collection here, Dr. Sign.” She said not looking away from the books.

“Yeah, I haven’t been able to part with them.”

“Moving?”

“You could say that…just leave the books on the shelf all the way to the left. What is the quote? A room without books is a room without a soul?”Derrick took a volume of The Life of Samuel Johnson into his hand and caressed the binding. “Books have given me joy all my life especially since I lost my sight. I don’t think I have to explain it to you, but the feel of a book in the hand the binding, the boards, the smell of the paper and leather. The sound of the pages even, still give me pleasure.”

She was busy calculated what he had and feeling a little dizzy high up on the ladder, when a tall gaunt man (she hadn’t noticed previously) with hollows under his eyes wearing a threadbare double-breasted suit sitting at a desk, busy writing a letter, said “My dear, does he have any works by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred ?”

“I have an appointment but an associate of mine will be here in about an hour to settle up with you. Will that be enough time?”

“Yes it should.” She said feeling a nauseous pit in her stomach.

Derrick rubbed his stumbled chin, “You don’t waste time do you?”

“No, Dr. Sign, I don’t. It was nice to meet you.”

The grey-eyed girl retrieved a notebook and pencil from her knapsack and began methodically recording the values of the books, what they would be worth online and how much she could pay Dr. Sign. She was sure she wouldn’t have enough money to front for all the books. There was well over $50,000 worth of books here. A hot sensation ran made the tiny hairs stand up on her arms.

“Quite a collection wouldn’t you say.” The man sitting at the desk was pulling a book from the shelf. Ah, the Arabian nights, one of my earliest influences. Buying books from a blind man, I do wonder how he went blind, perhaps he looked into one of these very books, possible a book containing a message so unearthly, so titanic, so beyond the ken and realm of human understanding his eyes ceased functioning rather than relay the horrid message to his mind.”

“Perhaps” she continued writing figures in her notebook trying to focus.

The gaunt man perused the shelves, “Ah yes, the Iliad, the Odyssey, this blind man does see I contend with a library such as this. This apartment is quite nice you know? Not like the places I lived in while I was here, rat-holes they were, the high ceiling and moldings are quite nice. I just adore these windows. Do you know why Nito that I never liked New York? People say I found it too fast passed, to diabolical, to monumentally oppressive, and it is all those things. What I really didn’t like though was I couldn’t see the stars from my dingy apartment window. My view was a brick wall two inches from my window. Really. Are you listening Nito? I see you are busy let me sit I will write this all down in a letter for you; ok Nito?”

“Yes Howard…?”

“I just wanted to see if you were listening.”

“Go ahead write down for me. I know how you love to write letters.”

“OK Nito but I will be right here if you need my help. I do know my way around books you know. You know right, that…”

“Yes Howard, I know.”

He sat back down at the desk and started to write with a fountain pen.

After forty minutes the grey-eyed girl had almost finished tallying up the worth of Dr. Sign’s library, when a furry, orangey streak ran yipping by her scaring Howard out of the desk and up the library ladder.

“Egads! What was that?” Howard said.

The Pomeranian did a circuit or two of the room. Behind the dog Mort entered the room.

“Oh a mangy mongrel of a dog! I so do prefer cats.”

“Come here Leland leave her alone,” The Pomeranian continued to yap and run around the room.

“I’m almost finished.”

“You must the book dealer.”

“How’d you guess?” The grey-eyed girl recognized him from the poetry reading.

Mort recognized her right away.

“Gads! Nito what kind of people do you associate with.”

She tried to ignore what he was saying.

“Professor Sign gave me a check for you, just let me know how much when your done.”

“It will be just a few more minutes, just have to tally it all up.”

“Nito, do not trust this creature. I am sure he is probably an emissary from a unseen race of creatures so beyond our understanding doing business with him will surely infect your sanity.” He said from his perch on the ladder.

Mort walked across the apartment and into the kitchen and started to move some glasses and dishes around.

“Howard you have to shut-up. Why don’t you leave?”

“He has pink eyes! I bet he stole Dr. Sign’s sight and sanity.”

“Listen to yourself.”

“Did you say something?” Mort called from the kitchen.

“Ah no, nothing” she said.

“You have to leave, now.” She said in a harsh whisper.

“Here I brought you water.” Mort said.

“Oh thanks,”

“What kind of creature drinks water? Probably to keep his gills wet.” Howard said as he disappeared out of the door.

“My name is Mort by the way.” He extended his hand

“My friends call me Nito.” She said shaking his hand.

“I know what you did after that poetry reading.” He said with small smile on his face.

The Air Between Us

2012-03-29T09:41:00.002-07:00

Dear Charlie,

Read this letter by the shore.

Stand and feel. Feel the continent of nothing that separates us. See me from across the world gazing to you. Your eyes are green swirls in tidal pools. Waves wreathe sea foam along damp tracts of sand. My toes curled in the silken loam; up to my knees, breakers beckoning, undulating, “come deeper” the creamy tops swallowing my legs, hips.

Charlie feel the air between us. Let it caress, let it hold you, let it grip you. Lick blowy against you, through you. The sky is warm, pliable, let it enfold you. Taste the salt-spray bite of the breeze.

I kiss the air between us.

Feel my kiss on the air between us.

Love,
L.A.F

Eyes on the Street

2012-03-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

THAA-WHACK! That was the sound of Mort's body hitting the mat.

Mort remembers seeing the ceiling of the dojo dimly give way to a fluttering blackness at the corners of his vision, like someone was tightening a garrote around his neck, then it was total black.

That was the first time Mort met Professor Sign.

Looking across the mat; Mort didn't think much of the man at the time. Yes, he noticed the tattered

black belt, the thick wrists revealed by the sleeves of the man's gi, but the guy was blind.

Mort was cocky in the way a lot of young, strong, beginners are. Mort pulled his blue belt tight, went to shake the hand left dangling for him. When Mort came to he was shaken; he stayed away from the black belt for months.

Eventual Sign came up to him "Why you dodging me Mort? You have to tap next time buddy." So Mort grabbed hold of Sign's gi when Mort pushed Sign pulled when Mort pulled Sign pushed. Mort felt like chew toy in the mouth of a Rottweiler. It was like grappling a whirlwind inside an empty jacket.

"Don't use Strength Mort. Feel where I'm giving you energy than use that energy to throw me."

Sign took Mort under his wing teaching him all the techniques, and counters he knew. Pretty soon Mort was tossing guys on their heads as well. Professor Sign felt akin to this somewhat socially awkward kid that had certain brashness, an outsider’s attitude.

After years of training with Professor Sign; Mort knew almost nothing about him, he wore a ring but never mentioned a wife, he lost his vision somehow while working for the NYPD, that he taught Criminal Psychology and Profiling at John Jay College, and of course the ability to toss you on your head in the blink of an eye. Sign on the other had known almost everything about Mort. For instance that Mort was a nickname. That his family ran a funeral parlor which Mort worked at and that he was expelled from the Forensic Pathology Program at John Hopkins University because of extra circular experiments involving cadavers from the pathology lab. Sign knew Mort was something of a prodigy when it came to study lividity, desiccation, putrification, taphonomy, proximate and immediate causes of mortality. Mort though rough around the edges was a good kid and he knew his stuff.

It was on the Desi Freedman case, that Professor Sign enlisted Mort’s help. She was missing for two days when Steve Freedman, a Wall Street big-shot with enough dough in the bank to by a deserted island in the Caribbean and enough girlfriends to repopulate it with hired Sign to find her. Steve met Detective Sign at the couple’s posh west side townhouse. Through an open window Sign felt a breeze; the blowing breeze brought a smell of new churned dirt, and the faint bitter ammonia scent of decay. Sign knew Desi was buried not too deeply under the ivy in courtyard. He finished his talk with Steve Freedman in the courtyard “Ever since I lost my sight,” Sign said “that is one of my favorite sensations, the wind blowing through ivy.” He couldn’t risk letting him know he had found Desi already Sign had a feeling Mr. Steve had some blood on his hands and dirt under his fingernails.

Mort was trapped. Professor Sign was holding him down using his signature side control pressure crushing Mort’s head down against the mat. Mort futilely maneuvered his legs to get a knee against Sign’s body to create some much needed space, just to breathe. Sign said to him. "Mort I hear your pretty good with dead bodies."

"Yeah they don't complain much."

"I bet. I have a job for you if you’re interested."

Sign needed Mort’s expertise to place a time of death, cause of death, everything a forensic Pathologist does and more. Sign always like working just outside the rules so he chose Mort.

The Desi Freedman case was wrapped up. Two of Steve Freedman’s girlfriends murdered her in her sleep while Steve watched lying next to her in bed the whole time. Steve and the two girlfriends were both convicted and awaiting sentencing. Mort was able to tell the time and immediate cause of death through asphyxiation. Mort couldn’t testify in the trial because he wasn’t licensed but Sign brought Mort’s report to the coroner who gave it her seal of approval.

The duo continued to train jiu-jitsu together and Mort would help out whenever Sign needed him. They would banter about cases as they tried to choke or lock up a submission on each other. While Sign had Mort squirming locked in an arm bar, he said.

"How about working for me full-time more-or-less."

"Owww...Owww! Tap! Tap, tap."

"Oh, sorry. Mort I've learned a lot, how to use my senses to compensate, but I'm not superhuman I could use a pair of eyes on the street."

Mort became Sign's eyes on the street doing surveillance operations, trailing people, providing forensic backup at crime sciences, and supplemental pathology reports. With Mort’s help Sign was being hired for more and more high profile cases working with the FBI, NYPD, even the Joint Task Force on Terrorism, but he liked staying on small cases private cases that paid a whole lot more.

It was Mort’s idea to place a camera and listening device in Sign’s sunglasses. Mort really could be Sign’s eyes at a crime scene or when meeting with clients or suspects, communicating information via a hidden earpiece. Sign quickly garnered a reputation of semi-superhuman powers of deduction, a blind Sherlock Holmes.

Fortunes Told/ Hairs Cut

2012-02-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

Before I left for Mexico I figured I would get a hair-cut.

Someone had recommended I see this lady about it. Turns out she wasn't much of a barber but a hell of a fortune teller. I got the address from a contact in the city who mainly deals with polish immigrates and intelligence from their network of resistant fighters. This particular contact thought I needed a little insight in to my future and subsequently a trim.

After a little wandering around the village I found the Barber pole hanging from a second story apartment above a sign that said Fortunes Read/ Hairs Cut. I walked up the stairs and was passed by some ladies leaving almost bald but for some rough tufts of hair sticking out of their heads. Is that what I'm in for I thought?

The room was like your typical Barber shop, mirrors, two barber chairs, a waiting area with magazines, chairs, a coat rack, and pictures of men's and women's hairstyles but here you couldn't pick your hairstyle. There was also a back room separated by a beaded curtain over which hung a sign in the shape of a hand with an eye in it reading Aggi the Psychic.

I sat in the chair supremely skeptical and afraid for my head. Aggi came out, she was a dressed in a peasant tunic and looked like she hadn't had a haircut for years herself. Steel gray and black pulled back into a wild ponytail that reached the back of her thick legs. She looked at me with indifference and said "You want haircut?"

"Yes- please."

She motioned with her strong arm that looked accustomed to hard manual labor whipping out a white smock she tightly fastened it around my throat. Trying to loosen it with my finger I said "Just a little off the sides." and she smacked my hand away and said "Sit still."

Hair collected on the floor and she clipped away taking random bites off my head. I blew the hair off my face and blinked to keep it out of my eyes. Out from behind a beaded curtain a little woman with a broom twice as big as herself and dressed similar to Aggi started to sweep the hair into piles at Aggi's feet .Then a high-pitched voice came from below me.

"You will be traveling." The voice was coming from the little lady sweeping the hair into piles around the chair.

"Yes, I plan too." I glanced down and saw here staring down into the small piles of hair.

"Don't move." the lady with the ham hock arms said and forced my head straight ahead.

"The trip you are taking will end abruptly. Be careful of a green woman and be on the lookout for an enemy who is really your ally. Your trip will be ultimately unsatisfying. Don't go into bad places alone."

By this point it was all pretty general stuff and my head was getting cut to shreds.

"Stay off of motorcycles. You have knowledge, you feel you can't divulge. Disappear, someone is looking for you... you should disappear."

Although I was almost completely bald by this point I wanted to hear what she said and let the rest of my hair get chopped off.

"You will have children. But soon you will have to..."

At that point she stopped.

"Have to what?" I said looking down at the lady as she swept up the remaining piles of hair and waddled back behind the beaded curtain.

"Hey, where's she going?"

"No more hair no more fortune." the thickset lady with the scissors grunted.

It was true my head was completely shore.

Mexico Night

2012-02-22T09:16:00.000-08:00

It turned gory that night in Mexico. Blood mixed with rain water pouring from the palm fronds and running along the concrete patio of the cantina. I wouldn’t have ordinarily minded a scene like this but it was my blood pouring so freely into the night. Just a minute ago I was drinking a cerveza with lime and smoking in my new guayabera shirt; now my head felt the rain but the blackness faded. I was watching my life pour out, and I didn’t really mind, I actually felt quite comfortable head busted open face digging into the concrete patio.

I rolled onto my side and looked into the placid saucer sized brown eyes of the little Mexican kid. He was frowning and looked scared. I pushed myself on to my knees. Someone had done a good job putting me down. There was a gash on the side of my head, unsteady as I stood I placed a hand to stauch the bleeding.

“Hola Kid.”

He just looked at me with what I guessed was concern, shock or just plain curiosity then ran inside crying. I let myself drop back into the chair I had been sitting in when someone clocked me good with what must have been something hard and heavy. I looked at my shirt and it was rusty pink with blood, water and dirt. My beer didn’t spill so I took a long draught, lit a smoke and took a long drag.

“Fuck…”

“Senor Gringo you OK”? The ladies in the kitchen were apparently too busy to see what happen while they were preparing an octopus in a large cast iron pot. I had watched them squeeze the ink from the things head. The giant pot of pulpo was simmering now, it smelt both garlicy and like the ocean. Now I had ink coming out of my head- red ink I was back in school the old mistake machine back in action.

Why wouldn’t someone just finish me off? The Kestrel wasn’t so crude as to caveman bash me on the side of the cranium, no I would be dead if it was him who wanted me dead.

I had figured out why the Kestrel wanted me in Mexico though; I stuck out like a sore thumb down here, yeah I could get lost in Mexico,but it was easy for anybody to find me. The local news spread quickly and information was cheap and easy to get. I quickly found it hard to assimilate; they looked at my blond hair and blue eyes and soon I was gringo, or Americano or whatever they called me. I didn’t have a grip on the language so relied on who ever I stayed with. I also knew who hit me lying beneath a palm tree like another jungle plant was a green hat shimmering like the surrounding jungle.

Bridges

2012-02-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

"What is it with you and bridges?"

I was cranky with a screaming tooth ache and it wasn’t getting any quieter. My whole head was wobbly with it and the whiskey I was nipping to keep the pain at bay.

“What’s the matter Mr. Farmer- don’t you like the scenery? Besides it’s easier to see who’s coming up on you. You can learn a lot from me Chuck.”

"Yeah, right." This Kestrel guy was more irritating than ever.

We paced the bridge the wood slots making a creaking, satisfying noise as we crossed toward Manhattan.

"I saw your little post-script to your girlfriend."

"You are resourceful Kestrel."

“Did I ever tell you I was an engineer before the war? Good training for an intelligence man, figure out how the pieces work together. How you can eliminate unnecessary parts.” The Kestrel said with a grim smile.

"Listen you know as well as I, you need to get her out of there and the way I see it, they already know about her, they don't need me to tell them."

"Spit it out what do you want?'

"I need you to go to Mexico."

“I hear it’s just wonderful this time of year, I’ll send you a postcard. You are just hilarious Mr. Kestrel.” I took a drag from my cigarette and a pull from my whiskey.

"You don't get it; you could have compromised me Hombre, that’s Espanol by the way."

I glanced at him, threw my cigarette over the railing and stopped dead. My head felt like it would cleave off leaving me half a head; I thought Shit I could be happy that way- if the pain stopped.

"What are you saying pal?"

"I’ll bring her to the U.S. but you cannot have any contact.”

""What makes you think I’m going to do that now?”

“I know what kind of ratchet you two had going on... what your plan was, I know who is a big fan, of your Ava de Fleur, or should I say Louisa Foerster. So this is the deal; you leave, not forever, just till this blows over, she in deference to you- comes here to live but I can’t let you two communicate; too risky.”

"You don't understand. I was going to marry her. Where do you get off”?

“Very romantic; didn’t peg you for the romantic type. Maybe my reputation doesn't precede me. A year ago I would of just eliminated you both and been done with it but I like you Chuck. You remind me of myself in a way.”

I spun and grabbed the man by the throat shoved and held him just over the railing tenuously balancing him.

"WHAT makes you think I can't do the same to you right now”? The pain was too much.

"Mr. Farmer I have many tentacles, I have my eyes, ears, and talons in many places. You can let me fall into the river but your poor Ava won’t leave France; worse she won’t die in France she will die somewhere much much worse."

I let him back my head swimming with pain emotional and physical. I pulled out the flask of whiskey again and took two quick hits.

"The choice is yours Mr. Farmer, either you do as I say or...have it your way." he said as he turned pulling his overcoat up over his neck and face.... "You won’t be helping anyone especially Louisa or..."

“Or myself yeah right well…”

“…Or that little bun she’s got in the oven.”

Confessions to a Poet

2011-12-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

     "Rage. Rage and fear. Standard feelings growing up, for me at least."
Lounging on a stack of books doubling as a chair, a cherubic faced but rangy teen sat with pale crystal blue eyes and a shock of amber hued hair uncombed and crazily pushed back from his face, fussed with a pipe and a book of matches.
      "Arthur are you listening to me?"
"Merde, I can't get this pipe lit!"
      "Don't smoke that in here!"
      "Merde." he said slamming down the pipe and knocking over a stack of hardbound books.
      "Watch it! Those are already sold." She rushed over and neatly stacked the first editions back into a neat tower.
      "Merde- Nito, you need to relax. Have some fun, some deranging of the senses if you will."
      "Will you just listen for once?"
Leaning forward Arthur grimaced with a mock professorial look of interest placed the unlit pipe in the corner of his mouth; as he did so he lurched forward, his throne of books giving way underneath him and burying him in a avalanche of books. "Merde!"
      "Oh my god, stop fooling around Arthur"! the grey-eyed girl eyes flashed.
     An amber head of hair broke through the pile of books as did an scarred wrist and one leg sending books sliding, toppling down over each other; pages rippling.
      "Merde! Fuck! What happened to all your furniture anyway?" the poet said from under the pile of books.
     Surveying the tiny apartment there were stacks of books fashioned into a low table with an electric hot plate used for cooking and eating on, a stack carrying a computer, various stacks made into seats like the one Arthur had destroyed, and what looked like a futon covered with a quilted comforter was really another low stack of paperback books.
     "I got rid of everything to make more room for my books, its my business after all." the grey-eyed girl glanced approvingly at her handiwork.
     "I think I will stay under here, just let me smoke my pipe."
     "Ok, if you will listen."
     "Your wish Madame Nitocris, is my command." Arthur said with a flourish of his scarred wrist from under the pile of books. The grey-eyed girl lit his pipe and Arthur happily wagged his one leg and smoked with one half of his body still trapped.
     "As I was saying;rage and anger and I should add anxiety were what my home was filled with on those days my father had something go wrong at work. He would come home and sit smoking; literally foul cigarettes. My mother was no help those days she would provoke him with questions she knew he couldn't answer. She would start on her wine well before he came home her faced pulled into a paroxysm of sullen redness."
     "When the voices grew littler, quieter; I knew trouble was brewing. I would get a tingling sensation in the pit of my belly and sit on the sofa with a book, while the voices grew quiet and the sentences shorter. Till one would say "What was that look for?" and I would try to be as invisible and quick as I could so not to get hit with shrapnel from the opening salvo as the sentences got longer and the volume of the voices increased. Like a rising and falling tide of words and volume their arguments had a violent progression. From quiet and many, to loud and short, to dead silent, to loud and long, accompanied with a bang and a scream or a slam and a screech always yelling and sometimes even crying. Threats were a passed back and forth with increasing vehemence like a continuously escalating game of catch.
     If my retreat was successful, hiding in my room in our small house I felt the walls falling in on me. Then I would take all the books off the shelves on all four walls of my room. I neatly stacked them one-by-one and build a coffin, a sarcophagus and settle in sealing it up completely -phasing out the tumult going on around me. I wanted to die to the world I was in, die to the everyday world, and like a Pharaoh be reborn in another better world, to enter the worlds in the pages entombing me; to be a character in a book."

News Report

2011-12-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

The latest in a series of attacks on people using Kindles and other e-reader devices took place today in a midtown Starbucks. The attacker grabbed one woman's Kindle smashing it on the ground and used a shortened field hockey stick to smash six other devices before fleeing the scene. Like in previous attacks leaflets bearing the phrase “It was a pleasure to burn.” the opening line of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 were found at the scene. The novel describes a dystopian future where books are banned, and burned. Police have no leads about the nature of the attacks. Are these attacks the work of protesters? Occupy Wall Street has disavowed the attacks saying they do not believe in the destruction of personal property. Are these attacks a contemporary version Bradbury's book or are they something else? Do these attackers want anything? It’s hard to tell, they seem senseless and random, occurring often in coffee shops or on subway trains and platforms through-out the city. The mayor has promised to find the perpetrators and has stepped up security on subways and subway platforms. The only description of the attacker or attackers that has been made so far is someone wearing workers coveralls, sunglasses, ski mask and hat. If you have any information call crime stoppers at 1800-tip-crime.

In other news we are sad to report the passing of a legend; the songstress Ava de Fleur. The reclusive singer was famous for her days in New York after fleeing the Nazi’s occupation of Paris in 1940. Most people will remember her for her hit “All Year Through” which she mysteriously refused to sing after 1944. Miss de Fleur died late yesterday evening of natural causes.

Signs

2011-12-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

     Charlie in blue suit and striped tie swinging his briefcase slightly,walked through the fog on an unusually warm December to a five story apartment building of light brown brick and bay windows on W. 96th Street and pressed the intercom button marked D. Sign.
   Derrick rolled over searching for her warm soft skin, but woke to the faded smell of suntan lotion on the pillow next to him.  "Aw, Shit." he groaned. "She's gone." Has been gone for two months now.
     The bell rang an angry shriek again. Trembling and head circling, he heading the thirteen steps to the door, and pressed the intercom button.
    "Come up." he growled and flipped the lock open.
    The elevator being out of service Charlie headed up the stairs sweating from the climb and the strange December humidity. Charlie knocked and the door floated open; inside was a moderately sized apartment with an open floor plan living area with a small kitchen and a hallway leading to other rooms. Shelves of books, leather bound volumes, ancient looking tombs and large art and photography books covered one entire wall. The furniture was spare; a black leather sofa, a dinette set in the kitchen, and a aspidistra plant in the corner.
     Charlie, busy taking in the apartment didn't notice Derrick come out of the bathroom down the hall vigorously drying his face on a towel.
     "What? Are you with the IRS?"
     "Professor Sign, we talked on the phone, we had an appointment? Charlie Farmer with Forrest Insurance."
     "Right". Derrick moved to the sofa and sat hand holding his temples, moving head his head side to side cracking the bones in his neck and jaw. Running his hand over two days stubble and his shaved crew-cut.
     Charlie wondered why he got stuck with these assignments. Difficult clients who had to be visited at home. Charlie sat at the other end of the sofa and put his briefcase next to him; there was no coffee table.
     "OK Professor Sign, ah do you prefer Professor, Dr. or Detective?"
     "Whatever Chuck lets just get this thing over with." Derrick grumbled feeling his stomach churn with last nights gin and tonics.
      "Because we dealt with all the preliminary questions over the phone Prof. Sign I just have a few more things to clear up. We will be done quickly; I will get your signature and be on my way before you know it."
      "Right, shoot."
      "Do you use alcohol or tobacco?"
      "I have the occasional drink, and once in a while I will have a cigar."
      "OK, any family history of disease."
      "My mother was a terrible driver."
      "Excuse me?"
      "No none, are we done?"
      "How long have you've been blind?"
      "Twenty years but who's counting. Its only partial, I get around just fine."
      "Really, then what kind of hat am I wearing?"
      "Your not wearing a hat."
      "Good guess. But it says in your file that you lost your vision while still an officer for the NYPD. Correct?"
      "Your wearing a sensible blue suit and I think your girlfriend who wears a clean, flora perfume picks out your tie, so that is most likely striped and red for the holiday season. Your a insurance salesman so your clean cut but today you didn't shave because you were meeting a blind man. Your shoes are scuffed because you walk a lot to meet clients and you stepped in something on the way here. Your wearing a watch but its not working. And your sweating like a pig."
     "Wow, how the fuck did you do that."
      "Listen, I can tell you more. But right now I want to ask you a question."
      "OK Professor Sign."
      "What did you do with that green hat you stole- Mr. Farmer?"

Agents

2011-12-05T12:33:00.000-08:00

Shadows mixed with fog and night mixed with mists rising up through the parapets; wrapping up the bridge in an inveigling gloaming. I was supposed to meet the man here over an hour ago, but it's just been me, my cigarettes, and the occasional strong baritone foghorn of the tugs going up river. I've been on so many sides now, its hard to tell where I am anymore. I'm on my own bridge between Europe, Britain, the good ole USA and what I hope is a way out of all this, hell maybe even an end to the war. But the fog is so goddam thick. What the hell, where is this guy; boredom, the price we pay for information these days. In my coat are two letters, one I'm supposed to hand to this guy; if he ever decides to show, and one for Ava in Paris. It’s damp and the tobacco smoke from my lucky strike clings to my hand and finds its way up my coat and around my fedora. A siren is wailing in the somewhere out there that I presume is the city. A fire alarm. Clicking of Florsheims and he was on me before I realized it.

"Nice evening, don't you think? Especially for our line of work. No?"

"Yeah, just wonderful. I feel like I'm back in London. Lets get this done- I’m running out of smokes waiting for you." my irritation flooding over.

"I didn't know if it was you, Hamlet's father or Jacob Marley."

"Yeah, great." I didn't have time make jokes.

"Sorry, ran into some unexpected circumstances." the man said coldly, flatly.

"Just hand it over." I said taking out the letter.

As the man reached into his jacket pocket- I for once got a good look at him. He was of average height, with fair hair cut short. From under the brim of his hat, eyes that were intense, perceptive eyes, there was a icy rigor to the man that didn't match his lighthearted quips.

"Here you are." He held out his parcel, I handed him his letter.

And when we exchanged; I noticed a gap were his first two finger should have been on his left hand.

I realized then that I just exchanged top-secret documents with the man codenamed: Kestrel.

"Just remember what your working for, not who. There's no reason to turn a young spook into an old ghost." He called back as he vanished again into the sightless night.

Louise meets the Grey-Eyed girl.

2011-12-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

     "Charlie she was trembling and gasping for air. Walking up and down the aisles with this distant look in her eyes."
      This often happened when the grey-eyed girl went to the library. Bright sunlight radiated the whole floor suffusing the air with an white tangible light. Her heart clawed, bumped and banged against her thin breast bone. "So many." she thought. All goose flesh, the tiny gossamer hairs on her arms stood up. Whole body from crown to toe gave a cool shiver as she began pacing the stacks.   Turning her fingertips and delicately painted nails nervously over the spines, hand over hand, finger trading finger, she traced waves, up and down in long arcs. Literature, philosophy, fiction, poetry, books of criticism and memoirs. Here Milton, Nabokov, Lusseyran, Rimbaud, Thoreau, so many, so much too read, too absorb, too relate to,commune with and learn, worlds to visit. Whole green rows of Loeb classics and red volumes of Tacitus; here dusty volumes of Keats, leather bound and shedding volumes of Dickens.
      "Charlie she was only a young girl probably around eighteen. Her eyes were large oval and piercingly grey. She had this wild hair, and was smiling like she just found an old friend."
     Her feet couldn't keep up with her thoughts as she stumbled around S in the literature section. Viewing the lions out of the window casting shadows on the street below. Waves of nausea washed inside her; she fell onto her knees vomiting.
      "Charlie I had to help her up, I grabbed her arm and tried to help. She looked sick but something else... I don't know... possessed. She pushed me away, and went to a worn wooden chair kneeling in front of it."
     "Darling what is the matter with you?" I told you not to get carried away."
     The women had deep brown hair that time had seeped the color from mixed with a steely silver. Burly and matronly she sat on the chair observing the grey-eyed girl. With dark eyes the woman appraised her.
      "You must learn to control these fits, people will see your weakness. Come now child tell me what is wrong?"
     "I just can't take all this in at once." the grey-eyed girl got out between heaving.
     "Child it's already in you. Remeber a book is a book is a book is a book." the matriarch said.
    "Charlie, the light from the window was bright and yellow and I couldn't see. But I swear she sat in front of that chair talking to no one." Louise concluded.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 3

2011-11-19T08:26:00.000-08:00

     The alley way was dark but for ambient light of the city and a naked bulb that flickered over the door she just pushed out of- he following. A lone cat scampered over some crates and streaked down the alley; the air was permeated with the order of stale beer, urine and garbage. Through the funnel of buildings, traffic, trucks gasping and sighing could be heard; the incessant honking, blaring of taxis, the squeal of brakes.
     She faced him and pushed him up against the building, made to kiss him but passed her face next to his feeling his stubbled plump face. He turned to kiss her; she felt his mouth and teeth slobbering on her neck his excitement palpable and groping.
     "Oh, your some kinda freak huh? Good. What do I call you? I mean what's your name anyway?"
     "You can call me Delilah."
    His paw like hands moving over her back and ass, she leaned back and looked him in the eye, ran a hand over the back of his bald head pushing his head down to her crotch. The grey-eyed girl stepped back a little from him and her eyes matched the grey snub nosed Beretta she pulled from her handbag.
      "Wha...what the fuck? Wha..what d-do...do you want?" staring down the bore hole; black, flat and empty of any solace.
       The girl with the gun-metal grey eyes shoved the short barreled Beretta into his mouth grinding and chipping teeth.
       "Do you want to live?" the girl with the gun-metal grey eyes said. "Voir ma misère, hélas! Voir ma détresse." she quoted; a tear cold and slow rolling down her check. Her black fingernails tight on grip, but easily and light on the trigger.
    Gun in mouth; Samson jerked his head in shaky yeses.
    "Good....THEN STOP WRITING BAD POETRY!!!"
There was motion from a fire-escape overhead a figure leaned back into an apartment.
She left Samson weeping and trembling in a heap and out of the alley and into the New York night.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 2

2011-11-18T13:38:00.000-08:00

"Samson? Hi- sorry I'm late, did I miss your reading?" she said

"Oh, yeah, who are you?" he said his bushy eyebrows raised, he was expecting Chanteuse_23 to be some hideous thing that hadn’t seen the light of day for years, but here stood a slim girl in a navy-blue dress, curly some would say frizzy light-coffee colored hair pulled back and poorly tamed into a clasp. She had flat shoes and ribbed tights and a dark gray pea-coat. A green handbag slung over her shoulder.

Samson glared at her and said." I was expected someone well you know… anyway I can give you a private reading later. You’re much different than I thought.”

"SHHHH!" a white head whipped around from the seat in front off them. "Do you mind?" he was holding a Pomeranian and had pinkish red eyes.

"SHH! yourself ya rat!" Samson took an open-hand swing at the back of his head. The young albino man faded his head back just in time and glared at Samson. He got up with the dog and walked toward an empty seat. The grey-eyed girl looked at the pale young man unsettled; out of the corner of his eye he did the same.

"Lets get out of here these people can't write anyways. I know a place we can play pool and I can read you my poems. You know you got nice eyes."

They went to a dim bar; empty except for the bartender cleaning glasses with a rag. The green felt of the pool table like an oasis, humming green under a hanging light. Samson ordered a rum and coke and she got a bottle of beer.

"That’s not so lady-like drinking from a bottle like that."

‘There are a lot of things not so lady-like about me." She said coyly smiling as she rubbed the cube of chalk on the tip of the pool cue, and blew it off in a blue cloud. She wanted to get through with this before he tried to recite any of his poetry. She thrust the pool stick and broke; she sunk the two and three, then buried the six and purposely missed the one.

"Your pretty good for a girl." he said as he took aim at the twelve and he caught her raising the brown bottle to her lips suggestively for a long drink. He missed; it was time. She grabbed the pool cue from him violently. "You have grey rain clouds in your eyes girl."

“I prefer to think storm clouds."

"Why is there a storm coming."

"You'll see." she said and sank the eight ball. Turned and re-racked the stick and walked to a door marked exit motioning for him to follow her.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 1

2011-11-17T12:28:00.000-08:00

A fingernail painted glossy, robin’s egg blue tapped the mouse and it was done. The meeting was set; she added some lines from Milton.

"With winged expedition

Swift as the lightning glance he executes

His errand on the wicked, who, surprised,

Lose their defense, distracted and amazed." (Lines 1277-86)

Fingernails painted black gripped the handle of the bookstore door and the grey-eyed girl spotted Samson immediately. Samson, the irony of the name was lost on him, not a strand on his furrowed dome. What he lacked on his head he made up for with hair growing greasy black and thick on the back of his paw like hands, knuckles, and escaping from his shirt collar swallowing up a gold chain and patriarchal cross.

Samson thought himself something of a poet; he reveled in disbursing his rhymed cliches at coffee houses and bookstore readings the audience always to timid and Samson to menacing for any critiques to be made. Finding him was easy. He had a Facebook page devoted to his frothy amateur poetry along with pictures of himself enjoying baklava and other desserts. Arranging the meeting was easy. She friended him using the name Chanteuse_23 and after holding back her vomit commented on how much she liked his poetry. Samson invited her to come and hear him read, she showed up late to miss his performance. There was no way in hell she could listen too it. That would literally make the grey-eyed girl sick.

There he was sitting hunched and straddling a backward chair while a tall, ornithological looking women read in a think French accent from the podium.

The Dream of the Grey-Eyed Girl

2011-11-11T09:31:00.000-08:00

    Sitting, reading a cloth bound book under a ginkgo tree a grey-eyed girl is falling asleep. A burgundy silk book mark ripples obedient and languorous in the breeze. Fan shaped leaves shake and fall a bright yellow cascade around her. She wears a mans sweater; the top two buttons missing she holds it closed with robin eggshell blue painted fingernails, when the breeze turns into a gust sweeping up the hill making the blond heads of the dry, overgrown grass wave and dance like ecstatic dervishes. Her grey eyes squint and watch a kestrel hovering over her tree and dart back out over the field and back again.
    Back firmly against her tree, her favorite tree atop the hill, she feels the comfort of soil, root, the entire earth. Experiencing the earth pulling her in and letting her go at once as she closes her eyes and nods off. The grey-eyed girl dreams of her mother; still young, vibrant dark hair, glamorous and mysteriously inviting like an alleyway at night. A promise of something behind those star-like eyes. She senses all the protection and leonine power in the way she embraces her father. Her father handsome; when all the markings of his face were but an outline and map for the deeply entrenched emotions that she would know. They hold each other tightly, and she hears the kestrel screaming.
    "Charlie, I dreamed about her again." Louise said sitting up in bed.
     "The grey-eyed girl?" Charlie said without turning over.

The Letter

2011-11-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

Dear L.A.F.,

It's getting near to Christmas time and the leaves are falling- they get pushed and scattered by the wind swirling as I walk the city surrounding me. Everyone races around, the men have taken to wearing hats again and the women their long coats and stockings, I have to hurry from one avenue to the next or get swallowed up. I'm not quite used to it. I can't help looking and investigating the vertical landscape. It is in a quiet gaping awe that I gaze at the decorative windows, facades, and the wrought iron gates; here a walk-up apartment house, there a church and again another apartment, townhouses and Tudor revival buildings. Lobbies, all in marble, bigger than the house I grew up in.

The city is a Goliath of ponderous concrete, sublime artistic craftsmanship, and continuous motion. But what is this monolith of constant motion compared to you? I know I promised to write you a poem. Compared to your eyes on me what is the city, the city awes me but you with just a turn of your head, a word, or reaching over in your sleep to clasp my hand and hold it close to your breast, there is utter fascination and wonderment. What is a city compared to your beguiling, I'm bewildered by you at times; the city in comparison is predictable and dull. I think of your hair like a dark waterfall flowing. Rushes over me and crushes me and I drown in perfumed delight in bountiful sensuousness. I am suffocated in locks like blackbirds wings fluttering and beating against my face but it feels incredible to be under and I take big gulps of you.

I read a scientific article that said some women can see an extra color on the visible color spectrum (that might explain some fashions we see today) they are called the tetrachromatic women. That's what happens when I look at you a whole different spectrum is revealed- things look brighter and better. Maybe that is what love does; it brings the whole world to life in different colors.

I am running short on time I hope everything is well with you my love. I wrestle everyday about rejoining you. Not having you by my-side at times is too much. I want to leave but I know what is best for us both. With that, here is to the hope we will be reunited soon, until then I will continue to see the world in this new light and know you are still in my heart.

With love always,

C. Farmer

P.S. You have to see the wonderful parks, in the next letter I will tell you all about them. I even saw a kestrel eating a pigeon last week.

She Takes the Stage

2011-10-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

Amid scattered applause the singer took the stage. Her red lipstick shone in the pool of stage light set off against her clear ivory complexion and hair the color of October fallen leaves; somewhere between red and brown. A shimmering green sequined dress clung to her and held the collective gaze of the small subterranean nightclub's patrons. She clutched a Pomeranian under one arm, the microphone stand in the other. Her voice started out a husky whisper but grew resonate and had the depth of an underground river. She sang:

We met in the cool breeze of spring.
walked along the quay and the riverside
went to cafes and talked the day and evening away
we watched the stars all night.
in the morning
you said you could love me all year through.

In the summer we spent all day at the ocean-side
drank in saloons and danced and swayed
passing our way; we watched the stars shoot through the sky.
And you said
you would love me all the year through

In the autumn the wind chilled and blew
but we were warm together, I held tight to you.
and there were stars in our eyes.
and you were loving me all year through.

Then the days grew quick and the nights never-ending
because you had left me,
oh why, oh why?
You had said the stars had fallen from my eyes.

and you said you would love me all year through
and you said you would love me.....

She finished, her last breath was like a sighing wind beneath a bridge. She let the microphone topple over, held her dog tightly and left the stage. Before she left through the service exit behind the stage she donned her chameleon skin green hat with the ostrich feather. Ava de'Fleur the famed French singer promised herself never to sing the song again as she walked off into the New York night.

The Green Hat 2

2011-10-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

     They sat in the barely lit bar. Quiet, staring forward at the bottles of liquor and there own reflections in the chipped and smoky mirror. The hat sat mutely between them. Louise played with her earring and held her drink with her other hand. Charlie was feeling the effects of the adrenalin rush and was shaking thumb-nailing the label from his beer. The bartender eyed them from the other side of the bar cleaning glasses with a rag. "You know if we were married I would divorce you." Louise was the first to break the silence. They were the only ones in the dive and the silence clung to them.
      "I will take it back in the morning" Charlie said shaking his head. "I don't know what got into me."
       “We could be arrested for fuck sake." Louise said and turned to look at Charlie. He had a hangdog expression and she knew he was sorry, but what did he expect.
       "You didn't exactly stop me Lou." his sorrow turning to anger.
The bartender looked up; more to see if they needed fresh drinks than at their raised voices.
       "You fucking grabbed me, look at my arm Charlie." she raised her bare arm and there four purplish red marks where his fingers gripped her arm.
       "Shit Lou, I am so sorry." his anger being no match for hers he groped for an answer " I just don't know it must be the city’s getting to me. There's so many fucking people, they are everywhere. I mean just think of it the city is crawling with people above ground below ground there's no escaping them."
       "So you steal an ugly fucking hat, no you make me steal an ugly fucking hat?"
        " I don't know Lou maybe I’m going nuts."
She started turning her earring in her ear again. "What are we going to do with this thing?” Louise nodded toward the hat.
        "I will take it back tomorrow."
         "You can’t do that they will want to charge you or call the police or something."
        "I'll just say we were frightened by the fight."

The bartender moved from behind the bar and a french song came on the jukebox. Louise couldn't remember the name of the singer but she loved the song. It was something very romantic and melancholy about two lovers breaking up.
         She saw how much Charlie was beating himself up and decided to let it go for now. Besides it had been exciting and she had never seen this side of Charlie even after being together for over a year- she just wasn't sure how to react.
        "Come on Charlie, shall we?" She took the hat and placed it on in the same rakish fashion as before at the shop. She held out here hand; he smirked, took a sip of beer and started to twirl her around. They danced tightly pressed to each other for the entire song Charlie indulging in her dark eyes and she in his tight grip around the small of her back. He dipped her and before she was up he met her lips for a long full kiss as he turned her and did it a second time.
The song ended and Charlie and Louise's world only consisted of each other breathing. Louise dizzy from the dance and even more from the kiss noticed a man over Charlie's shoulder looking directly at her.
"So- you have the hat." he said.